The Mastermind

by David Unger

  She sees the venom in his eyes. Maryam’s wrist is hurting and she is afraid. It is not going well at all. But she’s physically strong enough to push Samir away, back down into his seat, where he falls and starts laughing.

  “You are a sharmoota. Like Gomer in the Bible.”

  “You wretched man! Calling me names won’t accomplish anything.”

  His eyes are shining. “You are as evil as Tamar, although as far as I know you have not committed incest with your own father. You are not that depraved, I suppose.”

  Maryam is in tears, she is trembling. She runs into the hall bathroom, locks the door, and texts Guillermo: Something awful has happened with Samir. I must see you tonight. I will text you when I can get out of here. Please don’t turn me away.

  She puts the phone down on the sink counter and washes her face. She scrubs the back of her ears as if to clean away the poisonous words Samir has spoken. She knows she is not innocent, but she is not a whore. Her hands are still shaking as she tries to put on fresh lipstick and dab a bit of mascara on her wet eyes. Five minutes go by, but it feels like three days. What is taking Guillermo so long? Maybe he’s talking to his children in Mexico via Skype or has fallen asleep after too much drinking.

  She texts him a second time: Guillermo, please answer me. Now.

  Through the bathroom door, she hears Nasri’s voice again, fuller and more plaintive than before. She can’t understand why Samir likes her singing, since it is so over-the-top with romance and emotion, while he seems to have wilted like a prune and paradoxically developed a heart of stone.

  What had she been thinking when she married him? That she would be happy with a life of order, boredom, discipline, obedience? That marrying a respectable older man was better than living alone?

  She opens the door, goes quickly to the hall closet, and grabs a sweater jacket. She has to get out of the house, go somewhere, anywhere, whether or not Guillermo calls or texts her back. Maybe she will go down to the car and drive around the hilly campus of the Universidad del Valle, where it is safe and quiet. There’s a lookout at the very top where college students go to kiss. Maybe there, protected by a crowd of lovers, she will find peace.

  Before she closes the apartment door, she cocks her ears. Samir is actually trying to sing along with Assala Nasri, as if their two voices could form the same anthem of lost love.

  While Maryam waits for the elevator, her tongue itching, her cell phone vibrates. One new message.

  Ven, mi corazón!

  chapter thirteen

  the harlot

  As soon as Maryam is out of the house, Samir ponders his next step. It is only a little after nine, still early, so he decides to call his father-in-law. Ibrahim will not be happy to hear that his daughter has confessed her sin and is about to be cast out of the house by her affronted husband. A scandal in the small, tight-knit Guatemalan Lebanese community would be considered unseemly.

  “Ibrahim, this is Samir.”

  “Why, Samir, so nice of you to call. I was just reading in the Beirut Times—”

  “How long have you known that your sharmoota daughter was having an affair with your very own lawyer?”

  Ibrahim is silent for a couple of seconds. “You have no right to use that kind of language when referring to my daughter. Your words also cast a dark shadow on me. You owe me an apology, Samir.”

  “I have proof that your daughter is a harlot.”

  “Please, do not refer to my daughter, to your wife, with that kind of language.”

  “My language is not the issue here. Let’s focus on the facts. Maryam has been carrying on an affair with your lawyer behind my back for several months and you have not only known about it, but have actually encouraged it—”

  “I have done no such thing!” Ibrahim interrupts, his voice rising. “The idea that she and Guillermo are doing anything together repels me.”

  “Your daughter is a whore.”

  “I must ask you again not to use that kind of language. I know you’re angry, and to be honest, Samir, if what you say is true, then I will be deeply disappointed in Maryam. But I can assure you that this is the first I’ve heard of it. Please temper your words.”

  “This has been taking place right under your nose, akhi.”

  “Toz feek. I have played no role in encouraging it.”

  “You did, Ibrahim, by welcoming that Jew into your life and into your home.”

  Ibrahim is again repelled by Samir’s incendiary language. “To begin with, Guillermo Rosensweig is not Jewish. And if he were, you, more than anyone else, should know that it would make no difference to me. I think you need to calm down before you say something else I will not be able to forgive.”

  “You were complicit.”

  “Samir, you’re treading on very thin ice.” Ibrahim hangs up on his son-in-law, realizing he’s heard enough.

  * * *

  Guillermo is reading when the guardhouse buzzes to announce that he has a guest, a woman, and she’s coming up to see him. He knows it’s Maryam because of her text message. She’ll let herself in since he’s given her the passkey from the basement parking lot to his apartment on the top floor.

  As soon as she opens the door, Maryam falls into his arms, sobbing against his shoulders.

  “What’s wrong, my love?”

  “I told Samir I’m leaving him. He was awful, simply awful. He called me a whore. He knows all about us. Samir won’t give me a divorce.”

  Guillermo strokes her thick hair, trying to calm her down. “I didn’t realize you were going to tell him about us straight out. I thought you would first ask him to move out.”

  “There was this romantic Arabic music playing . . . It just came out of me. If you had been there, you would understand.” She begins rubbing the small of his back, and his buttocks, to calm herself down. Touching his body helps anchor her to their reality. Guillermo really does exist. “Please hold me,” she cries.

  He wraps his arms around her, then moves back and kisses her lips, which still have the peppermint taste of the toothpaste she dabbed in her mouth before coming up. He feels a stirring in his groin, but his mind is elsewhere, plotting and calculating. He pulls away from Maryam and says: “There’s nothing more I want to do than make love to you, but I think it’s better if we talk.”

  Maryam stares at him, her eyes burning wet. “I need a drink. Something strong.”

  Guillermo obliges and goes into his kitchen to get a bottle of tequila. He opens a cabinet and grabs a Don Julio Reposado, and fills two shot glasses to the top. He walks over to where Maryam is sitting on the small sofa he bought a week earlier. He sits beside her, looks her in the eyes, and clinks. “To us. To the road that has brought us together. To the long road that will take us away from this mess.”

  As they sit closely, Maryam tells him about her exchange with Samir, the full story, all the details, all the insults. The whole time Guillermo’s shaking his head. He’s disgusted by Samir’s comments. At the same time he’s trying to figure out their next move. He’s a lawyer, after all: he should come up with a plan, a strategy, as he does for his clients. But his mind draws a blank. Twenty years of legal experience have not prepared him for the affairs of the human heart.

  “Oh, Guillermo,” Maryam sighs, clasping him again, “what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t think it’s wise for you to stay with him. Especially if you are trying to get a separation and a divorce. Samir sounds angry and vindictive.”

  “I’m afraid he is.”

  “Can you go live with your father until we straighten out this situation?”

  Maryam takes a long sip of her drink and winces. “No, I don’t want to get him involved in that way. It would put him in an awkward situation within the Lebanese community, and, well, it would strengthen Samir by supporting his argument that my father somehow brought you and me together. And frankly, I don’t even know if my father would take me in. You know, in many ways he is just like Samir—tough and very
moral—and I don’t think he will be very happy when he finds out about us.”

  “I think you’re probably right. It’s one thing to enjoy working with your lawyer, another to have him carry on an affair with your own daughter right under your nose.”

  “I hate the power that men have over women.”

  Guillermo would like to defend his gender, but really doesn’t know what to say. He is no exemplary specimen of the judiciousness of the masculine sex. His attitude, he realizes, has always been as paternalistic and sexist as those of both Ibrahim and Samir. “And what if we rent the Plazuela España apartment again?”

  Maryam shakes her head. “That will be too expensive and will give Samir ammunition to use against me. No, I will simply move into the guest room in our apartment. There are two twin beds there. Samir is many ugly things, but he will respect my privacy. My unwillingness to move out will strengthen my position at home by showing everyone that I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I don’t think that makes any sense. The simplest thing would be to move out and begin living separate lives—”

  “If I separate from him, Samir will make my life hell. I will be ostracized by the whole Lebanese community. Everyone will believe him because he is a man, an elder. Even if he says nothing about us, he will be seen as a victim of his scheming and lying young wife. And I will be no better than a harlot.”

  “I want to live with you, Maryam, you know that. But I am willing to wait. I am very disciplined. I can wait a long time.”

  Maryam smiles at this. The one thing she most loves about Guillermo is that he knows how to wait: he can hold back his orgasm for hours, urge her forward, let her use him for her pleasure, over and over, top, bottom, from the back. Yes, he can wait for a long time. For anything. She is sure of that. Whether it is making love or waiting for her to be free.

  They start kissing on the couch and then roll down to the brown shag rug on the parquet floor. There is ferocity to their lovemaking: strong, violent, a kind of expiating rhythm to it. And when he finishes inside her, they lay together, intertwined.

  “I wish I had met you twenty-five years ago,” he says, “before I met Rosa Esther.”

  “I would have been barely fourteen! I wouldn’t have been interested in an old man like you,” she replies, and plants a big kiss on his cheek.

  And afterward, after more cries and tears, as they both lie half covered by scattered items of clothing on the floor, Guillermo says: “We don’t know what’s going to happen next, my love. I want to be with you. We should be celebrating because we are closer than ever to being together. But this is Guatemala and anything can go wrong. We need to plan, consider all the possible outcomes, in case we are forced to separate. Samir’s unpredictable. You may not have noticed, but I suspect there are people out there monitoring our movements. I felt it the first time we met at the Centro Vasco. There was this blue Hyundai in the lot—”

  Maryam kisses his cheek again. “I know you’re always looking over your shoulder.”

  Guillermo nods. “For good reason. We need to be even more strategic now because we’re in a position of weakness. If something happens, we need to set up a place for us to meet secretly.”

  “I’m tired of letting my mind rule my heart, Guillermo.”

  He shushes her. “I’m not talking about that.”

  “So should we simply say goodbye and plan to meet in Paris next Christmas?”

  “Very funny. We don’t have to separate immediately.”

  “Not with what’s going on with Samir?” Maryam looks at her tequila but doesn’t reach for it.

  “Look, your father hasn’t wanted to worry you, but he’s been getting more threatening phone calls because of his work exposing Banurbano, although it may have something to do with the way he is managing the textile factory. I don’t know.”

  Maryam’s eyes well up again. “Why did he ever accept that appointment? My father is so stubborn.”

  “He is, but I’m his lawyer and the president wouldn’t dare touch him. I’m pretty sure of that. But, of course, there are spies.”

  “So what’s our master plan?”

  Guillermo gets up off the floor and goes over to the table. He pours more tequila into his glass and brings back to Maryam what is left of hers. “I suggest a less romantic place than Paris to meet. A town closer to home. Maybe in El Salvador. There’s this ugly little seaside town, La Libertad, about forty-five minutes from the capital. There’s really nothing there, an ugly church on the main square. If anything should happen, we can plan to meet there, in front of the church, on the first of May. No phone calls, no text or e-mail messages between us, because our movements will be monitored. Should anything come between us, let’s meet there starting next year and every May 1 after that.”

  “If something were to happen, one of us wouldn’t be there.”

  “And the other person would know that and act accordingly. And plan to be back there at the same time the following year. Can we promise this to each other?”

  “Oh, Guillermo . . .”

  They stare into each other’s eyes, then touch glasses and drink.

  “There’s something else. Something we haven’t even realized.”

  Maryam curls her body into Guillermo’s on the rug as if into a huge, absorbing sponge.

  “We’re free, Maryam, totally free. Do you realize that?”

  She nods, though her face shows worry. She knows that soon she will have to drive home and the battle royal between her and Samir will begin.

  “Yes, like Prometheus.”

  chapter fourteen

  you can’t kidnap a car

  Maryam is now sleeping in the guest bedroom of their apartment. It’s her decision not to move out, but Samir tells Hiba that he’s banished her from their bedroom because she has admitted her affair with “Rosensweig,” even though she’s never admitted anything. Samir taunts his wife for sleeping with a Jew, though he knows that Guillermo and his wife have been attending the Union Church for years.

  Maryam prefers to be alone—she no longer has to see Samir’s body. She no longer has to endure the rough texture of his skin next to her in bed, nor witness the spots that appear almost daily on his face, soon becoming moles.

  Many men age gracefully, but not Samir. All of his physical deficiencies are amplified after her confession: his shoulders are unquestionably slouched, he shuffles more than he walks, and when he removes his shoes and puts on his slippers, a terrible smell permeates the living room. Maryam is certain that he wears the same socks for several days at a time just to upset her.

  Though she can barely tolerate Hiba, Maryam makes sure the woman lays out clean socks and underwear on Samir’s bed every day for him after he showers. Though showering has become less frequent—does he want his wife to move out to escape the stench? She closes the door to her room at night, but the odor of dirty socks is inescapable as it slides into her bedroom from under the door.

  In truth, her confession came at the right time: there’s no way she could have spent another night in his bed.

  * * *

  Guillermo and Maryam begin spending two afternoons together every week in his new apartment. With only three renters now in the whole building, it resembles a fortified castle, a private haven.

  Since Samir refuses to grant her a divorce or annulment, Maryam realizes that she and Guillermo may never share a life together. In Guatemala they cannot live “in sin.”

  “What’s wrong, my love?” asks Guillermo. They are sitting up in bed drinking green tea.

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he says, brushing her hair from her forehead. “We shouldn’t keep secrets from one another.”

  “Okay,” she says, setting her cup on her night table. “Where are we going?”

  “By which you mean . . . ?”

  “What’s our future?”

  “I don’t know. Just imagine: only three months ago we had no future together, b
ut now we at least have this—”

  “You mean our twice-a-week tryst?”

  “It’s more than that. I am out of my marriage—”

  “And I’ll never be out of mine. I feel that I am still lying about us to my father. I am certain that Samir has told him. I should just tell him the truth and see what he says. It’s not right for me not to tell him.”

  Guillermo knows that this will depress her further, but he cannot hide the truth. “You’re right, your father already knows. Samir called him the night you spoke with him. Ibrahim asked me not to talk about it, out of respect for him, and to remain discreet. I promised him I would. He does not approve of our affair in the least.”

  “I wish you’d told me.”

  “I’m telling you now. Didn’t you wonder why your father stopped inviting me to have lunch with you?”

  Maryam slumps in the bed. She wants to hide under the sheets and pillows.

  “Sweetheart,” Guillermo says to her.

  “You shouldn’t keep secrets from me.”

  “I promised your father.”

  “My father’s not me. I need you to be honest with me. Samir and I are at a stalemate. All I can do is wish him dead . . . or maybe we should just kill him.”

  “What a wonderful solution, Maryam—both of us spending the rest of our lives in the penitentiary with Kaibiles, murderers, rapists, and drug addicts for having plotted to assassinate your husband. Even if we hired someone to kill Samir, what would we achieve? It’s true, 90 percent of the crimes in Guatemala are never solved, but this murder would surely be traced!”

  Maryam raises her right eyebrow.

  “I’m not joking. It’s easy to hire assassins. It’s done almost every day here. Do you know that only eight out of every one hundred crimes are ever prosecuted, and only one of the eight criminals is brought to justice? This means that 1 percent of all murders in Guatemala are solved, but if the killing involves an act of love, it goes up to 50 percent.”